Italian and Japanese speech

If you are a poet who reads Italian, why not consider Japanese?

The sounds are the same with almost none of the pitch issues of some Asian languages such as Chinese and Vietnamese.

Older poetry that was written as Japanese poetry and not Chinese imitations is almost always written with only a few but single kanji characters or “tann-goh” and you can be almost sure that the pronunciation will be Japanese unless it happens to be a character that only has its old Chinese sound. And the characters will have their sound in superscript or ruby font above them as furigana.

The language is easy to speak. Really.

What is difficult is to read an arbitrary piece of PROSE taken out of context. THAT text will have multiple or compound kanji words and THOSE are what is not easy EVEN FOR THE AVERAGE Japanese person! But that is prose.

The beauty of Japanese poetry is that the more Japanese you learn, the richer each poem becomes in echos, associations and a range of nuance that YOU can bring to it. You will do so. You can not but do so. You do not need to study Japanese literature and aesthetics to fall in love with Japanese poetry.

An old poem that seems formulaic now, will reward you later by being both familiar and yet totally refreshed (by you, inadvertently.)

It is truly one of those gifts you can give yourself and always know that it is a keeper.

The Chinese characters are so few in so many poems! And as you learn the basic characters, you, too, may cease to find them strange at all (except those based on ancient mis-copying by scribes, our scapegoats !!)

Start by learning the Hiragana script invented by women for their poetry and diaries. Don’t worry about ever reading the original manuscript of a poem. You can admire it now or later if it appeals to you. Find a CJK computer font that you like. Save poetry text on a computer as UNICODE. Avoid English transcriptions of hiragana script into Latin script (roumaji) ; the hiragana is no worse than Cyrillic and far easier than Greek or Hebrew or Sanskrit or …

Remember: if you like the sound of Italian, you are half-way there. The hiragana script writes the language largely the way it sounds, just as they do in Finnish or Suomi: consonants and vowels for the most part with just one consonant followed by one vowel. Really only 5 vowels to worry about. Imagine.

And remember those furigana above each kanji ! Furigana are in hiragana script. You may need a magnifying glass if over 60. See? Consonant, vowel. 
fu ri ga na. foo ree gah nah. You are on your way !